Usa new news

Ravens Coach Makes Head-Scratching Comment on Facing Bills

The Baltimore Ravens could be in for a surprise when they hit the field to face the Buffalo Bills this Sunday — a cold one.

The forecast for this weekend’s divisional-round playoff game is frigid, with temperatures in the low teens with snow and a wind chill that could reach single-digits. While the Bills have played a handful of games in freezing conditions, the Ravens are not as experienced in the cold and may have the wrong idea of what to expect in Buffalo.

Speaking to reporters this week, Ravens special teams coordinator Chris Horton incorrectly guessed that the Bills may have had a special advantage to playing in the cold.


Ravens Coach Hoping for Warmed Field

When asked about the difficulties of playing in the cold and wet conditions in Buffalo, Horton said the team would need to decide closer to gameday just how they approach the field. He then asserted that the field surface in Buffalo is heated. It is not.

“We really don’t know, we don’t know what the field conditions are going to be like,” Horton said. “I know Buffalo — I think the field will be heated. So it might not be as frozen as what’s outside right now.”

Horton was not totally off base in his guess about the field in Buffalo, just a couple of years too early. The Bills are in the midst of building a new stadium in a parking lot near the existing Highmark Stadium, one that will include strategic heating on the roof to melt snow, in the seating and also on the natural grass surface.

“In March 2025, the new stadium is expected to be ready for the integration of a new grass playing field that will be installed and ready for opening day in the Fall of 2026,” Chris Pirrone of SI.com reported. “That natural grass field will also be heated.”

The Ravens have taken some other measures to prepare for Sunday’s game, with head coach John Harbaugh telling reporters that the team opened the doors to its practice facility to make it colder.

“We got it as cold as we can in here right now, and it will be even colder tomorrow, when I get all the water shut off in here so the pipes don’t freeze,” Harbaugh said, via the team’s official website. “So we’ll have it cold. Would love to be outside, but we just can’t. The fields are too hard and they’re too frozen.”


Bills Perform in the Cold

The Bills have had some success in cold and snowy conditions in recent years, including a snowy win over the San Francisco 49ers earlier this season that clinched their fifth consecutive AFC East title. The team also faced single-digit temperatures in the playoffs before, facing the New England Patriots in the wild-card round in 2022 with the temperature hovering just above zero.

The Bills played a perfect game in the frigid cold, scoring touchdowns on all seven offensive drives before a final kneel-down to conclude the game, beating the Patriots 47-17.

Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.

This article was originally published on Heavy Sports

The post Ravens Coach Makes Head-Scratching Comment on Facing Bills appeared first on Heavy Sports.

Exit mobile version